


Jack's Alphabet

by Riennynn



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-01 20:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 5,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riennynn/pseuds/Riennynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Jack Harkness has died by every means out there - or at least it feels like it some days.  An alphabetical recounting of the circumstances.  Typical Jack-related humor, innuendo, angst, and resurrection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Amazing Altercations

**Author's Note:**

> This plot bunny snuck up on me late one night as I was attempting to fall asleep. I started listing alphabetically the ways Jack might have died, only to discover that I had more than one method for each letter. Rather than trying to make it all fit, I decided to write multiple causes.

**Avalanche (Asphyxiation)**

Caught high in the Alps during World War II, Jack sent his men rushing onwards as he heard the telltale whisper of motion above. The wall of white blotted out the sun and the enraged cries of his men as they helplessly watched their Captain being buried alive. The last thing he felt before the pressure on his chest and smothering snow blacked out his vision was relief. They were safe - and they’d probably dig him out before he died too many times.  

The sub-zero temperatures were a good excuse when he gasped back to life  with the company medic frantically searching for a pulse.  "Numb fingers there, Vic?" he quipped cheerfully, climbing out of the suffocating icy tomb.  "We're burning daylight!"  He accepted a wool blanket gratefully, hiding his face for a moment, before straightening with his Captain's smile back in place.  Five more deaths to add to the mental tally.

**Automobile Accident**

Model T's were all the rage.  In hindsight, Jack should have thought back to the hovercraft, shuttles, and gliders of his own youth and realized that seatbelts were necessary inventions.  He was never sure whether it was a broken neck from flying out of the vehicle or internal injuries sustained from striking a tree that killed him.  There's an unspoken reason why he  _always_ makes sure his team is belted in when chasing aliens.


	2. Brilliantly Bungled Business

**Beheading**

He's thankfully never had to experience this one.  Most planets have moved on to disintegration and laser pistols, and he didn't land in a time when "off with his head!" was common.  Part of Jack wonders if his body would grow back, or if his body would grow a new head.  

"Maybe they both would," Ianto comments idly one night when he ponders the thought after a particularly close call with a tentacled alien's particle blade.

Jack grins and offers, "Two of me might be fun," to cover the chill running up his spine.

**Brain Damage**

Head trauma during both World Wars was a foregone conclusion when leading his men into battle.  Being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a mortar fell, too close to an exploding grenade (better him than the wide-eyed infantrymen whose voices had barely cracked), or getting coshed over the head with a rifle butt.  Jack recognized the headache of concussion, hid it from the others around him as best he could, and hoped that he would succumb to it in his sleep and revive come morning.  Having to quietly open a vein and bleed out or shooting himself to move past the worst of it would have been an option if there was privacy.  Taking a chance on someone finding his body in the interim, however, wasn't worth it.

**Bullet Wound**

Jack has lost track of the number of fatal bullets he's taken.  The fastest and most painless are those to the head that destroy enough of the brain's vital pathways that he drops before the pain registers.  The slowest and most painful are gut shots, leading to a slow bleed out or self-poisoning from the contents of his own intestines.  

Disabling shots to the kneecap or shoulder take longer to heal when he's forced to stay alive for the process, but Ianto firmly refuses to kill him and reset the clock.  Jack waits until his lover has drifted off, eases the head from his unbandaged shoulder with a silent wince, and kisses Ianto's brow before soundlessly walking into the bathroom in his bunker.  The med pack under the sink yields a small pill, and he sits in the tub before swallowing the fast-acting cyanide.  Come morning, he'll be good as new, and able to brush it off as his incredible healing powers to the team.  

In the small camp bed, Ianto keeps his eyes firmly shut and pretends he doesn't know what Jack is doing.


	3. Captivating Contortions

**Capital Punishment**

During his stint with the Time Agency, he and his partner were sentenced to death on a half dozen worlds.  After fleeing the Agency, he racked up a half dozen more in his own right.  Creative methods of escape were always his specialty.  Better to blow a raspberry at infuriated planetary officials while warping away than confront his own mortality.

He's never had to deal with it on Earth.

**Castration**

It's not something Jack wants to talk about.  The usual blasé bravado is firmly in place, but Ianto sees the haunted look in his eyes when Owen makes a crude comment about "dis-member-ment" when faced with their latest case, a man found dead in an alley with strange bite marks.  The unfortunate victim was dressed in the remains of a henley and jeans, a student by the contents of the worn canvas satchel found with the body.  Just a kid on the way back from the local Uni hangout, detoured into the alley to take a leak, never to walk out again.  Just an alien they'd been chasing down for a week, from a species that fed on ammonia.  A chance meeting, one set of razor sharp teeth, and Daffyd Smith left to bleed out from his opened flies.

Ianto follows Jack back to his office after the others file out for the night, gauging the decanter of whiskey almost three glasses emptier and the Captain uncharacteristically wrapped in his greatcoat at his desk.  

"Jack?"

The empty tumbler hits the desk with a dull thud.  "It's funny, you know.  Everything always grows back, good as new.  The horror though?  That stays."

Ianto wraps his arms around Jack's shoulders and kisses his temple in the silence.


	4. Dramatic Deaths

**Defenestration**

Undignified when administered by a jilted lover.  Flame-haired Geneva hadn't been pleased to find him in bed with her lady's maid.  And her butler.

Horrifying when witnessed by his team, leaning out the shattered remains of a fourth-floor window when the Rift artifact they'd gone to retrieve turned out to be a forcefield generator.

**Dehydration**

Crossing the Sahara on a mission for Victorian-era Torchwood ranked high on Jack's Never To Do Again list.  Biting sand fleas and justifiably paranoid natives were the least of his worries after the alien artifact he was sent to retrieve evaporated his entire water supply.  The hallucinations and blinding headaches were bad enough; attempting to drink his own piss even worse.  

When he stomped back into Three's Cardiff headquarters, sand still in his boots and with one hell of a sunburn, he didn't bother listening to Emily Holroyd's complaint that he was two weeks later than scheduled.  He ignored Alice Guppy's threats while stripping naked in the middle of the Hub and pouring water over his head.  He took a fully clothed swim in the Bay and happily drowned twice just so he could forget about lying parched on a dune within sight of civilization.

So began Jack's fascination with water.

**Dismemberment**

The Master had been fond of this one, beginning with a different limb each time.  He spent an entire week slowly removing Jack's arms and legs with a dull handaxe, moving towards his torso joint by joint, always stopping the bleeding just before it became fatal but reopening the wounds daily to stop the healing process.  He hinted that the Joneses were receiving his flesh as part of their meals.  The mental training provided by the Agency to control pain and biofeedback to prevent fatal shock became a curse.  

When Jack was little more than head and torso, the Master ordered a mirror brought in and left him in front of it, for once free of chains, completely helpless to move away from his own reflection.  Tish had been unable to contain her horror at the sight of him for his weekly feeding, dropping the bowl and spoon and collapsing in tears.  She'd kissed his tear-streaked cheeks and crawled away to the guards' jeering voices.  Later that night, Jack swallowed the forgotten spoon and was blissfully dead for a few hours.

**Drowning**

Also a favorite of the Master.  Jack learned to inhale the water, hastening his own demise, rather than watch the sick pleasure on the Master's distorted features through the Perspex walls of the tank.

Occasionally pursuing an alien led to an impromptu dip in the Bay or the Taff.  Jack never worried about those deaths; the team would retrieve him or he'd wash up soonder or later (hopefully without any witnesses to retcon).  The worst was watching Ianto and Tosh's faces recede to inky blackness when a kraken-like being dragged him down twenty feet from the disabled boat before the explosives were ready.  He had no recollection of being swallowed, nor the frantic search of the creature's vast entrails.   He'd come to the next morning with his head in Ianto's lap and Tosh's hands wringing water from his coat, bits of kraken dotting their faces.  They laid on the bottom of the boat for a few minutes in silence, Jack gathering them in his arms, and savored being alive.  


	5. Extreme Events

**Electrocution**

For as many kinks as the team seemed to think Jack had, Ianto could tell them (not that he would, even when pressed), that his lover is surprisingly not prone to swinging from the rafters while having sex involving whips and chains or food substances.  One night he'd brought a catalog to bed from a mail order adult store, hoping to garner some hints as to what Jack might prefer to keep things exciting.  Despite all the reassurances, Ianto still harbored insecurities about his own experience satisfying the notorious Captain Jack Harkness.

They'd collapsed in a sweaty tangle of limbs after a vigorous session, sheets long since abandoned on the floor and Ianto sprawled half over Jack on the tiny bed with catalog pages crinkling between their fingers.

"Warming strawberry flavored edible massage oil?  Order us a case of that!"

"Oooh, they have those lacy knickers in men's sizes?"

"Nope, we already have handcuffs."

Ianto flipped to a few pages with the corners turned down.  "I, erm, thought you might like some of these?"  He tried to hide his blush against the broad chest below his cheek.

The silence stretched as his lover turned pages.  "Ianto..."

"I know I'm not really the most adventurous, but we can try - " He was speaking directly into warm skin, desperately hoping that Jack wasn't going to try and make eye contact.  Or suggest they buy one of the leather-and-metal contraptions that looked more like a torture device than sex toy.

Gentle hands laid him back against the sheets, and unexpectedly compassionate blue eyes met his in the half-dark.  "Ianto.  While toys are fun, I don't need anything else to enjoy myself with you.  Well, besides plenty of lube."  The last was said with a chuckle, encouraging him to join in.  "Besides, the last time someone said they wanted to try something really kinky, I ended up having to hand out Retcon to an entire crime scene investigation."

"Jack?"

"I'm completely willing to try out anything  _you're_ comfortable with.  We can explore to your heart's content.  But until you can look me in the eye after handing me a catalog with electrostimulation in it?"

Ianto cleared his throat, unsure what to say in response.  

"I've been zapped by those toys.  Let's just say they don't mix with spilled wine, faulty wiring, and an iron headboard."

"Ouch."

**Exhaustion**

The human body has its limits, although some go farther than others.  There is hunger and thirst, pain and shock, and the sheer physical boundaries that are an automatic death knell.  Exhaustion, however, has different definitions depending on the person involved and the present circumstances.

The present circumstances on one rainy night in a Cardiff pub involve a misunderstanding about an insult, a thick-fisted Welsh thug and his dozen or so equally large drinking buddies, and one Captain Jack Harkness who had the misfortune to look at someone the wrong way.  Amazingly (for once, he would be told when retelling the story later) not his fault, but the damage was done.  Jack for whatever reason wasn't in the mood to simply let them kill him and be done with it; he ran, pursued by them down alleys and over garden fences.  It would have been a clean getaway had they not piled into their cars to give chase.

Fifteen kilometers or so later, he dropped from sheer exhaustion.  Sprints were never meant to be held for that long.

**Exsanguination**

Bleeding out is like falling asleep, if Jack can shut out the pain of the wound.  He's dimly aware of Gwen pressing her hands to the gaping hole in his chest, wants to tell her that she's staining the sleeves of her new leather jacket with his blood.  A block away, he can hear the report of two revolvers - Tosh and Ianto must have taken the Blowfish down.  It's a pity they hadn't managed to do so before the PCP-crazed bipedal fish disintegrated his sternum with a particle blaster.  The shirt was practically new, and Ianto would have a fit: three shirts ruined in one week.

Ianto.

"Gwe - "

Her tears dripped onto his face.  "Jack, easy, love.  It'll be ok.  Owen's on his way..."

He batted at her hands weakly, feeling the warmth receding from his limbs.  Owen would take one look and know it was a lost cause.  

"Wh - where's - Yan?"  Rattling breath was never a good sign.

Running footsteps, three of them.  One pair of rubber soled trainers, one pair of expensive Italian leather soles, and the rapid click of Tosh's heels echoing on the asphalt.

Someone (Owen?  Tosh?) pulled Gwen away and cool hands smoothed over his brow.  "I'm here, Jack."

"So - sorry - " a coughing fit, flecks of crimson blooming bright on a pale pink shirt collar.

"Shhh, you can let go now."  Those hands cupped his cheeks, lifted his head to rest on a wool-clad thigh.

Grey rolled in on the edges of his vision.  "Sorry about...the blood..." he whispered.

Rolling Welsh vowels answered him before he succumbed to the undertow of blood loss.  "It's just Torchwood.  I'll be here when you come back."

 


	6. Fabulous Foibles

**Fire**

Fire delights species all over the cosmos; humans are not alone in their fascination with the dancing flames.  It can be a simple candle on a dark night, or a conflagration consuming an entire forest, a moving wall of incandescent heat.  It warms and comforts, and it also kills.

Jack has been the victim - unintentional at times, and very intentional at others - of death by fire.  Indirectly, it might be a spark in the engine compartment that ignites old wiring and sends toxic fumes through the ventilation shafts of his Den'balian shuttle.  He's a week out from where the Doctor left him at a seedy spaceport, still running from ghosts after the 456.  Instead of leaping into action and shutting down various circuits, he leans back in his seat, reaches into his greatcoat pocket for the crimson silk tie lovingly stowed within, and hopes that just maybe there will be a certain Welsh voice when the darkness surrounds him.

In a previous life, Jack would tell you that succumbing to smoke is far better than being conscious when the flames begin to lick at flesh.  Trapped in an abandoned warehouse by an angry mob, he spends just long enough fighting the fire to make sure his fiancee makes a safe escape through the roof before striding towards the source of heat, breathing deeply.  It's not Teresa's fault that the social mores of the early twentieth century won't accept Jack's disregard of labels when it comes to who he entertains in bed.  It's not her fault that she is heavily pregnant with a dead husband's child, or that she runs to warn him when she hears the mob gathering to "deal with that queer".  It's not her fault, he tells her when he pushes her onto the roof, safely away from the inferno below.  Live, he tells her, and forget him.  The authorities won't find his body among the collapsed timbers in the morning.


	7. Grim Goods

**Gagging**

No one had ever mentioned that Valnoth phalluses expanded to twice their erect size during climax.

 


	8. Horrible Happenings

**Hanging**

Done right, it was over quickly.  A momentary fall, a snapped neck, and hopefully waking up  _after_ they'd carted off his dead body.  Relatively painless with only the usual humiliation of losing control of one's bodily functions after death.  Nothing a quick wash and some new trousers couldn't remedy.

Done badly?  It was a slow strangulation, body twitching and struggling for air.  Blood pounding in the ears, white noise and the horrible sensation of rope digging into his neck.  Time spent watching the audience or his executioners watch him, mocking or intent, or sadistic.

Jack is unfortunately familiar with badly done hanging, at the wrong end of prejudices against sex or words or just about anything in the time he landed back on Earth.

**Heartbreak**

Anyone who says that a broken heart cannot kill you is lying.  Whether through wasting away and starvation, self-harm, or carelessness, a broken heart has been the death of him.

In the encompassing blackness after the last breath is gasped out, the final heartbeat, sometimes Jack hears a painfully familiar voice or feels a long-missed touch.

Most heartbreaking of all is reviving, waking back up alone.


	9. Ignoble Incidents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not completely happy with the flow of writing in this chapter, but Ianto insists that I share Jack's stories.

**Impalement**

Mid-way down on Jack's list of Ways He Hates to Die.  There have been four instances of impalement, all of which, ironically, took place centuries after it fell out of favor as a popular means of torture and / or death.

World War I saw exploding ordinance shatter a farmer's fence in the frozen fields of France.  Jack's batman flung up his arm to shield himself from the flying splinters and stepped blindly into the path of a fencepost-turned-missile.  There was barely a moment for Jack to notice, to push the young man aside (headfirst into a ditch, he would later realize), and take the post straight through the stomach.  Jimmy McEwen held him after the retreating armies left them for dead, Jimmy unconscious and Jack in between revivals, unable to believe that removing the pole would do more good than harm.  He refused to leave his Captain's side, the man himself too weak from blood loss to pull it himself.  Young Jimmy died of exposure with Jack's kiss on his forehead as the snows fell around them.  "A stray javelin," he referred to it ever after, and for all the good he'd thought to do, Jimmy lost his life.

A spear-wielding Sycorax pinned him bodily to a wall in 1972, neatly piercing his ribcage, puncturing the right lung.  The approach of constables drawn by the scuffle thankfully chased the alien away before he could reduce his victim to a pile of bones - and wouldn't  _that_ have been a fun thing to revive from? - and left Torchwood with yet another set of RetCon to deliver.

Ianto had to witness the impalement twice.  

The first came on a typically rainy Cardiff night after a Weevil hunt.  Jack slipped while hauling the unconscious creature, falling straight onto a bit of discarded iron fencing leaning against a skip in the alley.  

"Se...secure the Weevil...I'll...be fine...till you get back," he managed, plastering on a falsely reassuring smile that he was sure Ianto could see right through.  The decorative ironwork at the top of the fence which was responsible for his current predicament had been cast to resemble spearheads; ironic, he thought, as Ianto's footsteps echoed in the alley again.  His lover dropped to his knees beside him, hands moving around the bloody points protruding just below the sternum.

"I don't think I can get you off of this, Jack."  Ianto chewed his lower lip.  "Not without making it worse."  

Jack tried to turn the double entendre into a moment of humor, but failed, grimacing against a fresh wave of pain.  "Must have...nicked the spinal cord.  Can't...feel...anything below my...chest.  Just...do it."

The frown already creasing his brow deepened.  "You'll bleed out."

"Already -" a bubbling cough, "- dying, Yan...can wait till...after...if you want."  Fingers entwined with his, a point of warmth in his icy body.

He revived with his head pillowed on Ianto's fine pinstriped coat, hands still clasped together.  Jack never did ask whether Ianto had waited.

The second time, Jack sat alone in a rented room in the back end of a bar on some backwater planet he hadn't even bothered to learn the name of.  Videos of happier times looped on replay from his wrist strap, and he never saw it coming when a chair leg rent from its place during a brawl made its way through his torso.  Ianto's silent laughter and vivid smile followed him into the dark.

 


	10. Joyless Junctures

**Jumping**

...off a building, bridge, or other object high enough to result in death due to head trauma and/or massive internal injuries.  

As a means of escape when pursued by marauding aliens, angry significant others, and mobs who don't like his lack of prejudices.  

Attempts to stave off the pain of endless decades of waiting for the Doctor.  

Once, just to feel alive after Alex murdered the entire Torchwood team after midnight on January 1, 2000, a fleeting rush of adrenaline before the pavement rose to meet him.    

John Hart shoving him off a roof doesn't count.

 


	11. Knocking Knuckles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've named Jack's mother Nicola for this story, but I don't think we've ever seen her named in canon.

**Kissing**

Not by John Hart's paralyzingly lipgloss - but a near thing.

Collapsing from shock after an ethereal alien tries to siphon the breath - and his lungs - from his body.  Gasping futilely after air that won't do him any good, unable to even cough up the mangled tissue in his throat.

La petite morte.  The "little death" at the height of physical ecstasy, kissing Ianto deeply.

**Knife Wounds**

They're simple, primitive weapons by the fifty-first century.  Tools in the kitchen for those who practice the archaic art of cooking, though common enough in colonies on the Boeshane Peninsula.  Jack remembers his mother holding his hand, guiding him while he chopped white roots for the evening meal.  

"Be careful, my own, the knife is sharp.  I don't want you to cut yourself."

"But Mama, we can just use the dermal scanner to fix it."  Five year old Jack's brow creases in confusion.  "It's not bad."

Nicola pauses a moment, knife blade pressed flat against the counter.  "It's not the wound that matters, my own.  You can heal it, make it go away, but the pain still hurts."  Jack fidgets and squirms and they continue on to make dinner, his mother's words already forgotten.

It's happened countless times in the decades since that day in the kitchen back in Boeshane.  A machete to the thigh while exploring the Amazon, left to bleed out in a jungle ditch.  A bayonet that pierces his diaphragm and leaves him to slowly suffocate, unable to draw air in.  Stabbed in a back alley in London because he smiled the wrong way at someone's wife.

On a sunny Cardiff afternoon, it's not aliens but a drug-crazed street punk who attempts to mug Jack and Ianto after they leave the local Tesco.  He leaves a long switchblade in Jack's abdomen, stumbling away when Ianto draws his gun, left to flee as Jack collapses.  

"Jack, hang on," Ianto's hands are slippery with blood but he ignores them, bundling a handkerchief uselessly against the wound.

Jack gently pulls his hands away, calmly slipping out of his greatcoat to stop the blood from staining it.  Ianto always complains about blood in the wool.  "Shouldn't waste the handkerchief, Yan," he coughs out.  "It won't matter.  I'll be back."

He's swept back in time when Ianto whispers to him, "But the pain still hurts."

Jack dies with a smile on his face though, with two of his favorite people in all of time on his mind.


	12. Lost Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter Olympic broadcasts are to blame for part of this one. On a sobering note, an Olympian did lose his life on a luge training run at the last Games four years ago.

**Laughter**

"It's - it's - isssss," gasp, "uhhh - a huh - Manderi - Manderian party favor," Jack forced out between hysterical wheezing. "Sposed to be...eheheheh...a trick gift."  He's got to prevent the rest of the team from coming near enough to be affected.  Manderians have three sets of lungs and the "favor" really is a harmless thing on their world.  For beings with only one set of lungs (namely, humans), it will be fatal.

Hyperventilation was _not_ a pleasant way to go.

**Love**

Love has been the death of Jack, and he never regrets it.  

He's purposely let mobs catch him to give his lovers time to escape.  

He's defended battered men and women whose love of their spouses leaves him wounded from standing between them.  

Love makes him try to kiss the life back into Ianto at Thames House.  

Love makes him die a little on the inside when he wakes up with Gwen at his side and Ianto cold and still.

**Luge**

Jack wanted to try out the winter sports after peacetime began in Europe.  Sledding was a fascinating experience, reminding him of sliding down sand dunes on Boeshane, lifetimes ago.  Ice skating and skiing didn't go too badly either.  

The luge run seemed short enough, a lot like sledding, or so he thought.  A high speed collision with an icy curve had other ideas.  


	13. Marvelous Mishaps

**Malnutrition**

World War II concentration camps were a blight on the face of the universe.  In dozens of galaxies, Jack is hard-pressed to find ones that match the horror and cruel brutality.  He'd planned a simple infiltration under cover of night, depositing a small alien device that would disorient the guards with a hypersonic pulse long enough for him to open the gates and free a small group of children dying of hunger and exposure.  

The device worked brilliantly.  Jack had loaded the children into the back of his vehicle, tucking blankets around them and distributing canteens of water.  Signaling his driver, they were rolling back down the forest road when an SS guard with a machine gun appeared from the back gate.  

Too slow.  They weren't going to make it.

He didn't think twice before spreading his arms to make himself the biggest target possible, closing his eyes against the reality of small hands trying to hold onto his body, cries of despair from those he had just rescued.  

Reviving in a pile of corpses wasn't the worst of it.  Another guard dragged him out, assuming he was attempting to escape hidden amongst the bodies, and Jack experienced Hell on Earth.

The only small comfort was sharing out his meager food rations each day, knowing he would revive.


	14. Notable Notions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore in the first part of this chapter. If you don't have a strong stomach, please feel free to scroll down to "Neckties".

**Nails**

The Master was forced to become more creative in his methods to torment Jack.  "Have you ever wondered, freak, what it's like to be clawed apart?" he askes conversationally, caressing Jack's cheek with a fingertip.  

Jack musters the strength to roll his eyes, phantom knives still stabbing his spine even though the blades lay bloody an unused on a nearby table.  "Only if I have to keep listening to you talk.  Smugness makes you ugly."  It's a mistake, he realizes, when the Master sets down the stiletto he's been using to clean his nails and rolls up his sleeves.

The first and last thing he sees are those meticulously manicured nails heading for his eyes.  After that, it's only pain and darkness, hot streaks of blood rolling like tears down his cheeks and dripping from his chin.  White-hot slashes of those same nails raking across his face until the Master grows bored with his screams and pierces the back of his eye sockets.

**Neckties**

Ianto has finally coaxed him into a suit, complete with tie and polished dress shoes for a fancy dinner at the St. David's.  Red wine, filet mignon, and puff pastry give way to fiery hot kisses in their hotel room for dessert.  They're half undressed when the vortex manipulator beeps and Jack has to retrieve his hand from the back of Ianto's trousers and pants before flipping the cover open.  His lover looks up from where he's worked all of Jack's shirt buttons open and loosened his tie.

"What is it now?"

"Weevils barely three blocks from here.  Should be a quick hunt."

Famous last words indeed.  He's already forgotten about the formal attire when he tackles the alien lurking behind a rubbish skip.  Somehow during the struggle though, the Weevil tangles its claws in the fine silk tied around his throat and it snags on the lid of the skip when he's thrown up against it, toes inches from the asphalt.  

He never asks afterwards how long it took Ianto to find him, or what Ianto saw.

**Newspaper**

B'ham'fil ink is made from indigenous insect shells.  The Doctor picks up one of their daily publications on a space station and scans the hieroglyphs before handing it off to Jack without a thought.  It isn't until Jack starts clutching his throat and wheezing that the Doctor realizes fifty-first Boeshane won't begin inoculating its citizens against B'ham'fil allergens until the fifty-third century.

Anaphylactic shock is so undignified.


	15. Outlandish Options

**Orgy**

So it isn't  _precisely_ accurate to say that Jack has been shagged to death, but it has definitely led to his demise on multiple occasions.  Perhaps the most bizarre - and by that, also entertaining - circumstances involved a dozen participants of multiple species, an endless supply of hypervodka punch, and aphrodisiac enhancer pheromones. 

Horns, tentacles, two heads, three hands, Jack shares pleasure with them all.  They're all beautiful to him in some way, seeking mutual release.

Three hours in, and roughly half the participants have excused themselves to the tables in the corner, covered with a lavish spread of edibles.  A couple of others are dozing on the overstuffed cushions, ignoring the smears of lubricant and various bodily fluids.  

Jack's natural scent has been described as spicy, musky, subtle, and "indescribably masculine with a hint of citrus and a whiff of 'fuck me now' " (Jack always fondly remembers Ianto's deadpan expression).  Mixed with the aphrodisiac enhancers, and his normally impressive refractory period is down to ten minutes at the most.  

He deliberately ignores all the warning signs that his body has reached even its considerable limits.  Ignored the blurred vision and weakness, drowning it out in a wash of pleasure.  Perhaps it's more accurate to say that it's death brought on by exhaustion, dehydration, and far too many endorphins.  Jack thinks, as the edges of his vision grey out and his heart speeds until bursting, that deep down he's still unsatisfied.    


End file.
